Don't be so sure. Before digg committed its final internet seppuku by becoming a pinterest clone, its formerly-user-contributed feed became a feed for a few specific big media groups. It can happen, might happen, and in some respects has happened here (notice how a few contributors seem to consistently get through, however banal their posts or spammy their names?).

Dice, it seems, would happily shut the Firehose and give the front page feed to, say, CNN and Wired and Bennett Haselton and those types once they pay up. (Added bonus for them: no more "fuck beta" posts to roundfile.)

Taco Cowboy writes: Before I register my account with/. I frequented it for almost 3 weeks. If I were to register the first time I visited/. my account number would be in the triple digits.

That said, I want to ask Dice why they are so eager to kill off Slashdot.

Is there a secret buyer somewhere waiting to grab this domain, Dice ? Just tell us. There are those amongst us who can afford to pay for the domain. What we want is to have a Slashdot that we know, that we can use, that we can continue to share information with all others.

MightyMartian writes: Former US president (and everyone's favorite funny man) Richard M. Nixon announced his approval of the Slashdot Beta site.

"I was just telling Pat this morning as I made sweet Nixon love to her that what the web needed was a whitespace-riddled atrocity. Slashdot Beta is the Tet Offensive of discussion sites, so screw you, you stupid hippies."

Henry Kissinger was said to have been very pleased as well. Dr. Kissinger was quoted as saying "In Soviet Russia, Slashdot betas you!"

grommit writes: http://slashdot.org/ is a website that is testing out a new "Beta" web design specifically crafted to make the viewer's eyes bleed. Editor samzenpus is quoted as saying, "We were hoping for at least a 70% eye bleed rate (EBR) but when we found out that we're actually generating 95% EBR, we were ecstatic. We are proud to break new ground in unreadable web design!"

An anonymous reader writes: The Supreme Leader of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea and the ghost of the former leader of National Socialist German Workers' Party have approved of the new Slashdot Beta site in a rare instance of agreement amongst the two. The two strong personalities have a history strong disagreement of the most mundane of things but united today outside the Great Pyongyang Unicorn Lair with Slashdot Editor Samzenpus to show support. "Morale at Dice [Slashdot's parent company] is at an all time low, but the show of support from such great world leaders is an encouragement to the entire team", said Samzenpus.

somenickname writes: As a long time Slashdot reader, I'm wondering what website to transition to once the beta goes live. The new beta interface seems very well suited to tablets/phones but, it ignores the fact that the user base is, as one would expect, nerds sitting in front of very large LCD monitors and wasting their employers time. It's entirely possible that the browser ID information gathered by the site has indicated that they get far more hits on mobile devices where the new interface is reasonable but, I feel that no one has analyzed the browser ID (and screen resolution) against comments modded +5. I think you will find that most +5 comments are coming from devices (real fucking computers) that the new interface does not support well. Without an interface that invites the kind of users that post +5 comments, Slashdot is just a ho-hum news aggregation site that allows comments. So, my question is, once the beta is the default, where should Slashdot users go to?